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Comment by ankitoberoi | Hacker News Reader

Just Blocking Ads on all websites, is not a solution. You are only trying to put publishers out of business who provide and share information.

I actually wrote a post on the subject sometime ago: http://www.adpushup.com/blog/ad-blocking-bad-news-consumers/

Sorry about the plug, I'm a co-founder @ AdPushup and a near future product goal is also to prevent publishers from Ad Blockers.

I know I'll get downvoted here (everyone just hates ads so much), but there are networks which do serve malware-free ads.

Also, you don't want to punish all the publishers just because some (or even if it's a majority) do bad.

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> Also, you don't want to punish all the publishers just because some (or even if it's a majority) do bad.

Yes, I don't want to punish the honest publishers. But the ugly truth is that I don't really care. My time is limited and I have 1000 other things I'd rather do than fine tuning my block-lists. So I just block them all with the list I subscribe from some guy I never met.

Because it's easy.

Offer a method to block only the bad publishers that is as comfortable (or even more comfortable) as the current ad blockers and you might change something.

If you don't punish the publishers how would the problem ever be solved?

You should punish publishers who serve malware, popups, JS & other bad stuff BUT you don't punish ALL the publishers - many of them don't do that and are just fine.

In fact, instead of an AdBlocker, it is better off if there is a plugin which blocks such sites completely. Why use their content if you don't like them anyway.

And how would ANY user know which ad network is compromised or not before it serves them a delicious helping of malware? Face it, if you're using Adblock you're on a default allow model and any previously spotless network can be compromised at any time since it only takes one malformed payload to get through the cracks to infect a user. It's the same situation the AV vendors face. The only realistic option (whether the ad vendors like it or not) for a blocklist is to craft the regex to be as sweeping as possible.

On the other end of things the ad firms need to self-police themselves at a vastly increased level than what is happening now, preferrably under some sort of umbrella organization. But even if that happens I expect punishments to be mere wristslaps and non-legalistic in nature. At the end of the day, it's not MY business model that's at risk here, the stakeholders have the onus to make it work in the real world. They're not entitled to it because the base model worked on network TV and then assume it can be ported wholesale to vastly different environments without compromise and change.

but there are no easy way to discern the good sites from the bad so I just cant stop visiting bad sites when i get a link or search for something.

So the only way for it to get better is collective punishment. If web publishers made decent websites such things would not be needed.

No. That doesn't work. There's a reason collective punishment is a war crime, you know.

Why doesn't it work? If people decide to boycott a company or industry for unetical acts have worked in the past, not always but you cant say it dont have the possibility of a positive effect.

By the way, collective punishment is not a war crime. It can be in certain circumstances but so can a lot of other things.

We are not talking about boycotting a company or industry here. That's boycotting the Internet because Publishers who provide free information here make a large part of the Internet.

In the end, you won't find so much content freely available and would have to pay for it directly - most likely.

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